


Late Dawns and Early Sunsets

by Crash_Cat



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:55:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crash_Cat/pseuds/Crash_Cat
Summary: Four killjoys spend a long night under the stars, experiencing what freedom tastes like.A short story featuring me and my best friends as killjoys.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Late Dawns and Early Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> The characters in this story are me and my lovely friends from Tumblr!
> 
> Appearances:  
> • Me as Crash Cat.  
> • phantom-hope as Phantom Hope.  
> • fall0ut-drxmz as Neon Ghost.  
> • fromthelightstothepavement as Diamond Lightning.
> 
> Mentions:  
> • i-dont-vibe-with-gender as our dead friend.  
> • nyeah-nyeah as Lime Lamenter.

We looked at the stars. It was a clear night and the stars were brighter than ever. The further we were from Battery City, the more stars we could see, I had noticed. 

I recognized some of the constellations. Those had always fascinated me, because they were such crap. They were just a bunch of stars that were supposed to form some kind of shape together, making the night sky and even prettier and more interesting sight. But to me they never looked like what I should see, they were just the imagination of some people. They made me think of all the dreams we had.

We. Me and my friends. There were four of us, lying on the desert ground, under the stars. 

We weren't safe, not really, and I knew we could never truly be. But sometimes, on nights like these, I could pretend. And I could remember, remember how it used to feel, being safe. Not needing to worry about draculoids every fucking second.

Which was how we had spent the last year. We were the rebels. We were supposed to go after BL/ind. And instead they'd been hunting us down.

I looked at my scarred hands. Fresh hair dye still stained them. 

'Sea foam,' Phantom Hope decided, who saw me looking at my hands. Her eyes went to my hair. We hadn't been able to decide what colour it was. 'I think it's sea foam.'

Sea foam. It was a strange colour to me. I knew what it looked like, but I had never seen the actual the sea. And I was pretty sure I never would. I didn't even know if I would survive this month, let alone see the sea one day.

'I like it,' Hope added, her eyes twinkling, 'it's a really nice colour.'

'Thank you,' I said. She smiled and tucked a violet streak behind her ear. Her hair was still much prettier I decided. Oh well.

Then I shifted my gaze to the stars again. They seemed to stare down at us. Watching over us, some people said. If they were indeed watching over us, they were doing a pretty shitty job.

On my right was Neon Ghost, a killjoy about a year and a half older than me. The stars were reflected in their dark eyes, skin pale except for their flushed cheeks. Their lilac hair was sprawled around their head. It was a nice sight, seeing my friend happy and at ease for once in a while, even if it was only for a brief moment.

'A beautiful night,' Diamond Lightning, the youngest of us four, whispered in awe.

'It makes me think of something,' Neon said, and they opened their mouth.

'Late dawns and early sunsets  
Just like my favorite scenes,' they sang softly, seemingly louder in the silence of the desert. It was a song from an old cassette tape we had found in a deserted car. One play had been enough to make us fall in love. 

Our voices joined in, singing quietly to the stars.

As we sang I let my thoughts linger. We had also taken the car we had found that day, leading us to wild rides through the endless seas of sand. I felt like driving again, letting the wind drown out my thoughts. Unfortunately our car was currently in repairing after a rather unfortunate accident. 

So instead of the wind I filled my entire mind with the song. "Early Sunsets" the tape had said, written in thick black marker. There had been other songs on it too; "Vampires", "Sorrows", "Skylines". And others songs, songs of which the titles's ink had faded out and become unreadable. And each of them, every song, was just as hauntingly beautiful.

None of us knew anything about it. Who had made this music? What had inspired them to write these songs that made our hearts ache? And when? How old was the tape and what kind of life had it lived? No one in the zones had ever heard of it before. 

But maybe its slumber in mystery was one of the reasons we loved it so much. Maybe some things weren't meant to be known.

The tape was one of our most valuable possessions.

We weren't really great singers or anything and most of our throats were already sour, but why would we care? We simply sang because we wanted to. 

When we finished the song we were silent for a moment, and then I heard Hope let out a faint chuckle. And I laughed with her. And before I knew it we were all laughing. We didn't know what we were laughing about but we didn't care. It felt good to be laughing with my friends. We were alive and we had each other and that was all that mattered.

When our laughter had finally died out, leaving us breathless, we gazed up at the stars and watched the sky darken from a navy blue to a ruthless black.

The desert ground was cold, but we didn't make a fire. You had to have very bad luck to attract draculoids with a fire at this hour, but unfortunately that was exactly what had happened to us a few months ago, getting one of our friends ghosted. We hadn't made a fire ever since. 

Instead we huddled together and zipped our jackets up. Lightning got a big blanket out that he draped around us.

At these moments the strange connection I felt to them grew even stronger. We weren't just a group of rebels who had gathered because we needed each other. We also weren't just a group of friends who liked to hang out. We were a family. 

Yes, we needed each other, and yes, we liked to hang out, but it went much deeper than that. We were there for each other in everything and shared more pain and secrets than could ever be spoken out loud. Each other were the only people we trusted.

When we were all settled up, arms wrapped around each other, Lightning started talking. 

'Once upon a time there were four killjoys...' Neon ruffled his hair, which was a dazzling shade of purple.

'And their names were Party Poison, Fun Ghoul, Kobra Kid and Jet Star.'

And he told us a tale about the legendary Fab Four. And then did Neon. And on and on they went, taking turns. They were both basically libraries of stories from the zones.

And like that, hunched together, we spent a long time listening and talking, me and Hope hanging on every word they said. Sometimes one of them would add on to something the other said and they would argue about it's accuracy.

Their arguments made me and Hope cry with laughter. It had been such a long time since we'd been so happy.

At last we went to sleep, going into a satisfied slumber after the exchange of stories.

I awoke at dawn. Near the horizon the sky was orange, but above me it was still dark. The stars were fading with every passing minute. 

I turned my head slowly to the right, careful not to wake the others. From my right came even breathing, Neon and Lightning were still fast asleep.

I turned to my left then. I found Hope's eyes staring at me. Wide awake. Of course.

'Morning,' I murmured.

'Morning, Cat.' Crash Cat. Even now hearing the name, it made me happy. It was another sense of freedom, freedom from my past life in Battery City.

'Late dawns,' Hope referenced the song.

'And early sunsets,' I said with a smile. 'Please catch some sleep,' I added.

'Fine. If you do too!'

'Of course!'

Obviously neither of us ended up sleeping.

Later that morning, when the sky had turned pink, Lightning said he had found something the day before that he wanted to show us. 

He led us over a hill, his short hair blowing in the wind. Behind it were three graves. They were lined up, but that was the only neat thing about them. They were completely sprayed under, an explosion of colour. 

Some people had left behind messages on the gravestones, others had seemingly just tried to contribute to the work of art the pieces of stone had become.

The middle one still seemed to bare a name. I looked closer. "Lime Lamenter", it said. It was a peculiar name for a killjoy, and I had never heard of them before. For a moment I wondered what kind of life they had lived, what kind of person they had been, how they had died. I quickly cut off that last thought.

I figured that probably there once had been a name on the other gravestones too, but if so those were now hidden beneath layers of graffiti.

Looking at them I had to fight to not lose myself in memories of burying our friend and spraying his gravestone under. How his black hair had looked so wrong, not waving in the wind, his body small like always, but too small, his skin— I stopped myself, it hurt too much. I shook the thoughts away.

The graveyard gave me an eerie feeling, but I supposed this is what the killjoys that lay here would've wanted, lying here with their friends under the stars, far and free from Battery City.

We wrapped our arms around each other.

'It's not about the friends you make but the graffiti they write on your grave,' Neon whispered.

And despite the sorrow the place filled our hearts with, we smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story!  
> I hope you enjoyed it despite my lack of any talent whatsoever!  
> Please do tell me what you thought about it and if there are any mistakes!
> 
> Love, Erin


End file.
